LEONID and Larisa Loktev, the subjects of New York filmmaker Julia Loktev’s grim, despairing documentary, are Russian emigres who once worked as successful engineers in Colorado. Then, in 1989, Leonid was struck by a car as he was crossing the street, and left in a semi-vegetative state. Nothing was ever the same again.

“Moment of Impact,” at Anthology Film Archives, chronicles the grinding daily existence the filmmaker’s parents endure, isolated in their middle-class suburb. Larisa quit her job to care for Leonid, who is mostly paralyzed, can hardly speak, and may or may not be aware of what’s happening around him. For all intents and purposes, Leonid is dead … yet his eyes continue to stare plaintively, like a condemned prisoner’s.

Larisa shares his fate. She complains about her loneliness, her sacrifice, her agony, all of which is genuinely heartbreaking. But don’t expect any sense of redemption here. Larisa says she cares for her husband – whom she refers to as “it” in an ugly moment – not out of love or compassion, but out of duty.

It’s hard for us to judge a woman placed by fate in such an excruciating situation, a Sisyphus of suburbia who views her labors as pointless, and without end. Still, it’s hard to sit through such explicit hopelessness, bound to people who see suffering as without meaning.

The film is offensively exploitative of poor Mr. Loktev. He can’t consent to having his privacy invaded by his daughter’s omnipresent camera. Julia keeps her camera remorselessly on her father, who is physically incapable of turning away. Towards movie’s end, Mr. Loktev tries to say something. Julia runs at him with her microphone, all but prodding him with it to get him to bark, grunt or whatever it is he does. Through his drool, the pitiful old man says to his daughter what I was thinking throughout this undignified ordeal: “Go away!”

———

MOMENT OF IMPACT

A documentary directed by Julia Loktev. In English and Russian, with English subtitles. Running time: 115 minutes. Unrated. At Anthology Film Archives, Second Avenue and Second Street.